Will More Young Women Start Removing Their Ovaries?

By
Heather Wood Rudulph

Feb 25, 2014

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A new study by physicians at the University of Toronto in Canada has made a startling declaration: Women who test positive for the BRCA1 gene — which raises the risk of breast, ovarian and other cancers — should have their ovaries removed before they turn 35.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, studied nearly 5,800 women with BRCA mutations. These mutations are genetic and often undetectable until a screening — or the discovery of a lump or tumor — reveals cancer. The women in this group who had their ovaries removed early reduced their risk of cancer by 80 percent, and increased their survival rate by 77 percent.

Celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Christina Applegate and Sharon Osbourne have helped raise awareness about the dangers of BRCA genes. They each opted to have preventative double mastectomies when they tested positive for them. Jolie's essay about her experience in the New York Timespractically broke the Internet.

And that awareness has done a lot of good. Survival rates for breast cancer are 93% or higher if it's detected and treated early.

However, the prospect for ovarian cancer is much more grim. If caught early, survival can be on par with that of breast cancer. But there's a reason this form of cancer is called the "silent killer." Symptoms — which mimic the discomfort of a normal menstrual cycle — are largely undetectable. It remains the deadliest form of cancer for women, and survival rates have not improved in 40 years. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in 2014, about 21,980 new cases of ovarian cancer will be diagnosed and 14,270 women will die from it in the United States.

This new study indicates that medical intervention may be the only way to improve upon those statistics. An oophorectomy sends a woman into immediate menopause, and she may suffer lingering symptoms for years to come. But it's worth it, says Steven Narod, M.D., of the University of Toronto in Canada, who led the study. "These data are so striking that we believe prophylactic oophorectomy by age 35 should become a universal standard for women with BRCA1 mutations."